Trip to China - March 1999

Hall of Prayer for a Good Harvest in the Temple of Heaven

Tiananmen Gate (Gate of Heavenly Peace) with Chairman Mao's portrait, leading to the Forbidden City. You can see how hazy and polluted the air was here.

A common type of cycle cart, in Tiananmen Square. The square was being resurfaced with marble to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the People's Republic, so not much of it could be seen.

A temple in the forbidden city.

There are lots of bikes in China ...

... but many places are jammed with cars as well.

A garden at the Summer Palce, near Beijing. Rocks feature a lot in gardens, and everything was rather grey at this time of year, as ther had been four months without rain.

There is a huge man-made lake at the Summer Palace, with pleasant "features" like this. Again, it was very hazy.

Many of the Ming emperors were buried at a site about 50km north west of Beijing in an area surrounded by mountains, and an avenue of statues marks the entrance.

No picture can do justice to the scale of the Great Wall as it threads its way through the mountainous countryside. The path on top could take five horses abreast.

The Chinese lose no opportunity to set up stall and try to sell you something!

Chengde was the resort for escaping from the Summer heat and, being further north, was quite cold in March. At least the air was clearer.

Chengde also houses the training centre for China's traffic police.

A "fast food" outlet in Chengde,

and the early morning street market.

The Small Potala Temple is a replica of a Tibetan monastery, built on a hillside near the Summer Resort.
Monks are manning the incense stall at the Temple of Universal Peace.

We visited a family who lived in a farming commune. They had two rooms - a kitchen and a room for everything else.

A lot was grown in simple, home-made greenhouses.

This was their rubbish dump and sewer - the house is in the background!

We were welcomed to the town of Xian by a special ceremony at one of the town gates and give the "key to the town".

You can't take photographs of the actual terracotta warriers (and, again, no photograph can do justice to the sheer scale of the ensemble), but these are full size replicas at the factory making reproductions.

A worker at a Jade factory in Xian doing the most intricate work in the most primitive conditions.

And a final take-away - not that any of us dared sample anything from a place like this, even with all our Hepatitus jabs!!